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Squadron Leader "Dizzy" Digswell
In Biggles Forms a Syndicate, Squadron Leader "Dizzy" Digswell was an acquaintance of Biggles' who believed that he had discovered the whereabouts of the lost biblical city of Ophir in the Arabian desert. Towards the end of his career in the R.A.F., "Dizzy" had been stationed at Aden. It was a dull posting, he told Biggles, but one which eventually led to his early retirement on health grounds because of damage to his eyes from sun glare. But his stint at Aden was not without incident. While out on a flight in a "Fury", he had been caught in a sandstorm and forced to bale out near the emergency landing ground of Hautha about a hundred miles east of Aden. He landed near a cliff face and found a crack in the rock which looked too regular to be natural. It turned out to be an entrance to a cavern which "Dizzy" believed to contain artefacts from the ancient and lost biblical city of Ophir. Soon after this discovery, "Dizzy" had retired from service on health grounds. He did not tell anyone about this discovery until about a year later when he looked up Biggles in order to interest him in an expedition to explore the cave and perhaps recover some treasure. Biggles was reluctant to use his official position to smooth out the formalities of flying to a restricted area in Aden where the cave was, but he did agree to form a syndicate with the various Air Police crew and "Dizzy" jointly funding a mission. Bertie and Ginger volunteered to fly out with "Dizzy". Biggles described "Dizzy" as an eccentric but not as crazy as some people would think. He was a natural pilot with utter confidence in his own judgment--the very kind of pilot which aviation in the early days could not do without because they would take risks nobody else would touch. In one case, a aircraft called the "Flash" had already killed two pilots when the prototypes went into uncontrollable spins. "Dizzy" took up the third and deliberately entered a spin at low altitude in order to prove there was nothing wrong with it. In another case, after other pilots had complained about a prototype having too small a fin, "Dizzy" proceeded to cut the fin off completely and flew the aircraft in order to demonstrate that nothing was wrong. At least in the matter of the syndicate, "Dizzy's" confidence in his own judgment was proven right. Leaving aside the privation of being trapped in a cave with Bertie for several days and almost being killed by raiding Arabs, the expedition proved a success. The coins recovered by the syndicate did yield a sizable sum of money as compensation from the British Museum to be divided among the members. "Dizzy" was also appointed as the guide to lead an official expedition to the site. At the close of the story, the site had been confirmed as the location of Ophir and he was still busying himself at the excavations, hoping form important archaeological discoveries to be made. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters